Phil Jackson is probably the best coach in NBA history given he’s won 11 championships between his time as coach of the Lakers and Bulls.
A lot of people thought that since he was such a great coach that he would be a great GM/team president also. That wasn’t the case at all when he took over as the Knicks president.
The most games the team won with him as president was 32 which was well below standards and he and the whole franchise got some well-deserved criticism.
Phil and the team parted ways after only 3 seasons and he hasn’t really talked about it much since then until now.
While on the Curious Leader Podcast with Coby Karl, Phil talks about what went wrong and didn’t really take any of the blame saying. He blames Carmelo, the media and Derek Fisher for getting beat up by Matt Barnes.
“[The media] was decidedly against the organization, and they were looking for whatever they can do to throw aspersions,” said Jackson, who also compared his press treatment to the type President Donald Trump received during his time in office. “I kind of understand Trump had to live with probably for his first 3½ years in office with the media.”
“Derek Fisher, I thought, was one of my top leaders of the Lakers team and a guy who understood the relationship of players to a game and offensively how the [triangle] system plays,” Jackson said. “He was himself caught up in a personal situation. It was a distraction. And at best, undermined his authority with the team.”
“Carmelo, I think, wanted to be a leader, but I don’t think he completely knew how to be a leader as a player,” Jackson said. “And I think that the strength of his personality was intimidating to some of the coaches that were asked to coach the team. And so there wasn’t this compliance that has to go between players and coaches.”
Seems like Phil doesn’t have any self-awareness.
Flip the page to see the video.